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Bangor’s City Council chair owns a vacant home but for years has failed to register the property as required — avoiding paying $17,000 in fees to the city during that time, the Bangor Daily News has learned.
Susan Hawes has owned an unregistered vacant home on Buck Street for six years with her husband.
“I never gave it a thought,” Hawes told the BDN on Thursday when asked why she didn’t register the house as a vacant building when she bought it. She and her husband purchased the home in August 2020, city property records show, and no one has lived there since, she said.
The home’s front door was padlocked shut last week, BDN reporters observed.
For more than a decade, Bangor has required property owners to register vacant homes and pay a fee, a measure that stemmed from concerns about abandoned properties and has since evolved into a tool to combat the city’s affordable housing shortage.
Hawes’ failure to register her vacant home exposes a gap in the city’s enforcement of its own rules, given that she herself voted to raise the fees for owners of such properties in 2023. Bangor’s registry is one tool it has to address its ongoing affordable housing and homelessness crises, as it ensures homes are lived in rather than sitting unoccupied.
City code classifies any building that’s been unoccupied for 60 days as vacant, except garages or accessory buildings. Vacant buildings in certain zoning districts, including the one where Hawes’ home is located, must be registered with the city. There are few exceptions, such as for active duty military members or people who summer in Maine.
In some cases, homeowners can get the fees waived or deferred, but that still requires them to register within 60 days of the home becoming vacant.
Hawes and her husband also own and live in the house next door, she said. They’ve been working on fixing up the vacant home, but it’s not ready to be inhabited yet, she said. She added that she’s working with a lawyer to potentially combine the two adjacent lots. Before that happens, she probably will register the home as a vacant property, she said.
Bangor’s code enforcement department recently became aware that the Hawes property was vacant, Code Enforcement Director Jeff Labree told the BDN on Monday. He spoke with the owners a few weeks ago and they picked up a vacant property registration form from his office, but they have not yet submitted the registration, he said.
Beyond self-reported registrations, the city sometimes receives reports about properties that appear to be vacant and then reaches out to the owner for more information. Utility companies can also help the city identify vacant properties, Labree said.
“We work with vacant property owners throughout the process when we can,” Labree said, noting that in cases when a homeowner does not register their vacant property or pay the fee, the city may seek legal action.
That’s what Bangor did last year when it sued two property owners for failing to register vacant homes that were causing problems for neighbors. City spokesperson David Warren said at the time that the registration process helps the city keep track of vacant buildings and that it’s supposed to encourage people to care for their properties and fill them to help with the housing shortage.
There were 77 homes on the city’s vacant list as of May 29, according to a copy Warren shared with the BDN.
When the registry was first introduced in 2013, city officials were more concerned about long-vacant buildings that haven’t been maintained properly. Many of those properties are owned by out-of-state banks, but the rules apply to all homeowners and homes regardless of condition. At the time, registering a vacant home cost $250, and owners had to renew it and pay the fee again every six months.
In 2023, Hawes and the rest of the City Council at the time voted to implement a more aggressive fee structure. Now, the initial permit fee is $500. The fee doubles every six months, eventually capping at $4,000. That means Hawes and her husband should have paid $1,500 between when they bought the house and when the fee was raised, and $15,500 after that, totalling $17,000.
Michael Beck, one of the city council’s biggest proponents of increasing affordable housing, declined to comment specifically on Hawes’ home without knowing all the details of her situation, but said, “if there is anybody out there in the city who is avoiding the responsibility with the vacant property ordinance, I would encourage them to contact the city and get in compliance.”
He said he’d be interested in making the fee structure more flexible so that people who are actively working on getting their property ready to be lived in don’t have to pay.
“It’s all about getting properties activated,” he said. “We want people in those buildings.”